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Last week, LeBron James announced he was signing with the Philadelphia 76ers, his “last decision” in the NBA. After James made a call that had to do more with “a chance at the feeling of winning a championship” than family, money or tying up a narrative loose end, some observers and fans criticized him for “ring chasing.”



This is an accusation that has followed James since he changed NBA homes the first time, 16 summers ago. It’s also a term that predates James. The Athletic’s Eric Koreen and Shakeia Taylor discussed how it factors into James’ decision, what the term even means and how it might evolve in the future.



Koreen: I’m old enough to remember when the “ring chaser” label was reserved for past-his-prime stars who never won a title and were looking for a championship to complete their resumes. Karl Malone and Gary Payton of the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers best exemplified that archetype. Those Lakers lost in the finals, with Payton finally getting his title in 2006 with Miami.

In my mind, the definition stuck until, as with so many things in the NBA, LeBron changed the game. When a 25-year-old James left his team — the Cavaliers — to join another young star’s team — Dwyane Wade’s Heat — in 2010, he hopped off the Jordanian/Odyssean path (topical!) to chase his first title elsewhere. To many observers and fans, it was an admission that he could not win a title on his own, whatever that means, and needed to join forces with one of his peers to make it happen. It was a shortcut.

That conversation returned when Kevin Durant signed with the Warriors in 2016.

I’m not sure if those moves were considered “ring chasing” then, but they were thought of as something less than pure.

So, funnily enough, James was accused of ring chasing when, entering his age-42 season, he chose to join a former MVP (Joel Embiid) and two All-NBA players from last year (Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown) on the Philadelphia 76ers. We can split hairs, but I think it’s fair to say that given overall talent and the conference, joining the Sixers gives James a better chance to win a fifth title than if he joined Miami, Cleveland, Minnesota or Golden State. It’s a move much closer to my original definition of ring chasing than the second.

Before we go to the big picture, let’s zoom in. Is James ring chasing by joining the 76ers for his presumed last act? Has he always been ring chasing? And is there anything wrong with that?

Taylor: When you go into detail about what ring chasing is, both originally and how it seemed to evolve, I believe that it’s a silly debate. The goal of any competitor is to win. It’s not about the friends they make along the way. It’s not, or it at least it doesn’t seem to be, to please people on the outside. In the final count of an NBA career, a player’s worth is typically evaluated by accolades – and in “rings culture,” titles count more than anything. In that context, who could blame LeBron for best positioning himself for No. 5 when he’s trailing MJ and Kobe?

So, is LeBron ring chasing? Yes, he’s been ring chasing since The Decision. Is there anything wrong with it? No. It is what it is. I think it just has a negative connotation these days. But he plainly stated what motivated his choice. He’s getting older, and he wants the best chance to win.

I think what we are really experiencing is the “LeBron Tax.” He recognizes the power he has in the NBA, and he wields it to create his own narrative — whether we agree or not. Everything stopped while we waited for him to choose a team. No matter what he does or where he goes, he will draw a lot of opinions. He’s one of the most polarizing figures in sports when it comes to that. He loves the vocal love, but the criticism is just as loud.

Ultimately, I think people’s thoughts on ring chasing really lie in whether they like you and if you chose their team. Do you think we would be having this conversation if he chose any of the other teams you mentioned, Eric? How much does the chosen team’s personnel factor into it?

Koreen: This was precisely the question I was thinking about. Or: What did people want from him if he was going to keep playing?

You cannot convince me that the outside world would have cared if James had gone home for a third time. Nobody was like, “LeBron has to go back to the Heat, where he truly found himself in the first place.” I was pro-Golden State, just because I would have liked to see the novelty of James and Stephen Curry playing together, but I genuinely wonder if LeBron would have received the opposite criticism — he knows he can’t win anymore, so he went somewhere where winning was not the point. I have no idea what questions his going to Minnesota would have prompted, because the idea was just so dang weird. Maybe we would have just spent a week staring at bad Photoshop efforts?

My personal view is that the guy is 41, is still an impactful player and should do whatever excites him. (I say this as a 41-year-old.) I don’t think the “ring chasing” criticisms would have been there to the same degree as they are with the Sixers, but those who wanted to find a negative framing — the haters and doubters, Shakeia! — would have succeeded.

Even in this specific case, I think the accusations are pretty weak. If you concede that James has been doing this for 16 seasons (i.e. since 2010), he has won a title just four times. And this move, which doesn’t even make the 76ers the consensus favorite to come out of the Eastern Conference, falls well shy of partnering with Wade and Chris Bosh in the prime of their careers.

The more I think about this, however, the 2010 decision is the original sin that keeps this conversation so robust.

As we speak, we’re having conversations about Curry maybe not signing an extension as a way of forcing the Warriors’ front office into action. Victor Wembanyama took the 25-percent max, instead of a chance at the 30-percent max he would be entitled to receive, so his Spurs could have more flexibility. But if we’re thinking back to the Jordan model, shouldn’t they have to both maximize their earnings and be 10 toes down with the franchise that drafted them to maximally challenge themselves in their championship quests? (Never mind that Jordan wasn’t the easiest guy for a front office to work with.) We look at them differently because they never left, at least not yet, and stars have come to them, not the other way around.

My point: There are different kinds of shortcuts to take. So while acknowledging that the idea of ring chasing is both silly and evolving, how do you think we should be looking at it in the context of a league in which team-building is much more complicated than it used to be?

Taylor: First, as someone who grew up a big Jordan fan, I think we all need to stop chasing the ghost of Michael. Sure, he was great. He did things that a lot of modern fans really admire, and in that, he became the standard. Maybe to our own detriment, sometimes, because we continue to compare players to him when the league is so much different than it was 30-plus years ago.

To your point, team building is much more complicated than it was then. You’re not just dealing with big contracts and bigger, err, personalities. There’s so much more money. The collective bargaining agreement is much different and restrictive in some ways. And teams are having to maneuver through and around that, chemistry, player development and individual player personality and performance. It’s a lot!

Secondly, LeBron’s presence — it’s why we even care in the first place — impacts a team’s chances of winning greatly. That cannot be understated. Where he goes, rings follow. One could argue about the frequency, but he’s won everywhere he’s been, even though it took two chances in Cleveland. (Admittedly, I wanted him to return to the Cavs because I love a good story.)

With all of this back and forth on ring chasing, has winning become underrated? Do people really care more about purity than titles, Eric?

Koreen: I think people care about both. At the same time, we’re just about impossible to please. What were the most narratively satisfying championships of the last 15 years? I’d argue, in some order, the 2011 Mavericks, 2014 Spurs, 2016 Cavaliers and 2022 Warriors stand atop that list. In each case, we had to witness some sort of prolonged struggle: Dirk Nowitzki’s post-2006 career, the Spurs’ collapse in 2013, LeBron’s repeated failure to get his city a title and Steph showing that he could “do it alone,” or whatever.

So it’s not so much ring chasing as it is legacy chasing. When we’re considering greats in their winters, we want to see them try to accomplish something that will go in the first few paragraphs of their basketball obituaries. That’s why I believed Rich Paul when he said if the Knicks didn’t win the title, James would have likely gone to New York. Nothing is topping that 2016 title or the sheer volume of LeBron’s statistics, but helping the Knicks end a 54-year streak would have been an accomplishment befitting James’ career.

Alas, that option wasn’t there. What was left? Helping the Wizards win 50 games for the first time since 1978-79? (Hey, he could have played with Anthony Davis in D.C.!)

To answer your question, I think the pushback to the “count the rings” argument has been an overall positive when considering players’ greatness. I think we better understand how little is in any individual player’s control, even in a sport in which one player can dominate more than in other team sports. You need all sorts of luck and outside contributions to win a title. Winning isn’t underrated; it’s appreciated in a more complex way.

I think this is why there is not much outcry over those Malone/Payton-type of ring-chasers anymore. In fact, we sometimes encourage later-career stars to demand out so they can compete at the highest level — Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo come to mind. We understand Tim Duncan in San Antonio was the exception, not the rule.

This is why James’ decision likely took so long. He was looking for an appropriate career-capper, only to find there wasn’t one. We were probably doomed to have a good portion of the population poking whatever holes there were to find in James’ decision.

With that in mind, is ring chasing, used as a pejorative, dead after this? Or only until Wemby joins Luka Dončić in Los Angeles in 2030?

Taylor: Ha! I wish! Wouldn’t it be great if every debate had a natural endpoint? But this is sports! And every new generation brings its own point of view and criteria to the argument. I mean, the GOAT debate reignites every few business days.

And I’m not saying it’s always, or entirely, a bad thing. As new players ascend to greatness, the goalposts will move.

It’s funny you mention Wemby, because he’s already received a lot of attention for everything he does and says. And considering how desperately (complimentary) he wants to win, I think we’ll have this conversation again. Topics never change, just the people involved.

For as much as I dislike what sometimes can amount to excessive noise, it speaks to the level of engagement and care we have for the game we love. Winning does matter. It’s cool as hell to see these guys win. It’s dope to see them give a damn about doing it. The legacy building, the stories we get to tell, it’s all baked in there.

So while maybe “ring chasing” isn’t controversial at all, it’s provocative and it gets the people going.